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User talk:Joshbaumgartner/Gazetteer
This talk page is for discussion regarding the proposed Gazetteer project at User:Joshbaumgartner/Gazetteer. Some merits, for certain, but I'm not so sure it's the best approach to the issue. It has some potential, but it doesn't quite seem to fit with the encyclopaedic nature here. It'd be a great seperate project, one that I'm sure would get quite a bit of attention. However, for an encyclopedia, it just doesn't quite fit well. Lemme list the reasons I see. *Some of the information is extraneous, such as lists of connected star systems. *Other bits that are unneccesarily drawn out should be condensed and made concise. For example, a big long list of outfits should be reduced to mentioning what types of outfits are there and any special mentions (such as New Ireland's shipyard being the only place to buy a Modified Starbridge. *Many of the lists can be condensed into a single info-box template, eliminating 50%+ of the article. For some that would make the article a few lines long. And an infobox template would be highly neccesary for a heck of a bunch of spobs, as it makes articles look better, cleans them up, and saves space. It also presents large amounts of information in a much neater fashion. *Many planets and stations of high importance that deserve thier own articles would get placed in less important articles. A prime example would be Earth, which has had Sol merged into it at least once. Earth has many important aspects and it is also involved in the Wild Geese, Sigma, Federation, Rebel, Vell-os, and Polaris storylines quite a bit. If all the information that should be there was added, it would be much larger than the Sol article. I would have done this long ago, but I haven't had time to dig in the Nova Data files for all the information I need to expand many of these important world articles. *Many of the planets and systems that would get into their own articles in this project doesn't deserve them, such as many of the empty K-00X systems, all of Wraith space, etc. This project appears that it would call for them to have seperate entries. *It gives the appearance that this whole Wiki is a game guide. It's not. Removal of extraneous information and moving the rest of the information to an infobox (not present) would make the article look more like this: user:JoshTigerheart/NewEnglandExample Though ideally New England should have it's own article (it's information woefully dwarfs Wolf 359's, hence why I'm against systems having articles), due to its heavy involvement in all major strings minus the Pirate storyline, which need specific mention. Though until there's any consensus on your poposal, I recommend putting it on hold, since it could peeve other editors that you're carrying out a proposal that hasn't passed yet. However, if it does pass, I won't do anything to stop it. Personally, this came to me during my first shift at work (gosh I hate split shifts!), and I think it'd work best. If a spob has a fair chunk of information available on it by itself (e.g.: Azra'Iusia) OR has at least fair involvement in the storylines (e.g.: New England), it deserves its own article page. Otherwise, it needs to be added to the list article. This way, everything important gets to stand out, whereas minor ones without much information doesn't eat up the EVN Wiki, but has all of their relevant information available and is easily accessible due to all the redirects to the article. And since I'm too lazy to do this just to reply to the two points on the talk page, I'll reply to your reply here. We might be striving to be the ultimate source of EV knowledge, but that doesn't mean everything deserves it's own article. Also, unfortunately, not everything deserves mention either. To use it as an example again, like Wikipedia, we're trying to become the biggest source of knowledge, except we're scoped to a single subject. However, like them, we have to be a bit choosy in what we actually do add. I.E, an article on a plug that merely gives you five more credits to start off with would be pointless. It'd be so insignificant that it wouldn't really need to be mentioned anywhere. There are thousands of plugs, having information about every single one of them would not be very useful, especially since many don't do much of anything. At least, that's my opinion on it. Second, there is no written policy, unfortauntely. It's all precedent, common sense, and "what we've always done" here. Hence I'm strongly considering copying Wikipedia policy over here and then modifying it to fit the needs of the EVN Wiki so that way we have something written to refer to. Afterall, we mostly follow guidelines very similiar to Wikipedia as is, so might as well have it written somewhere. Of course, I probably should ask RMF first, since he is the one here with sysop and beuacrat rights. And finally, I'm going to move your notification in the EVN Wiki:Community Portal to Talk:EVN Wiki:Community Portal, since that's where it would belong. JoshTigerheart 22:11, 10 August 2007 (UTC) Expanded details In view of your response, it is clear that I need to provide some further details, as it is clear you are misunderstanding at least some elements of the proposal: * This project does not recommend outfitter and shipyard 'cruft' lists. I cite Wolf 359 as a reference for what a gazetteer page should look like given the current structure. Note that New England is redirected properly as well ensuring that whether a person is looking up New England or Wolf 359 they will get right to the information, and that editors of other pages can link to either freely. * As far as I know, 4 or 5 spobs is about the most you will ever have in a system. Even in these cases, only in the rarest of circumstances would more than three warrant any great detail. So when you speak of infoboxes for places where there are a "heck of a bunch of spobs", where exactly are you thinking of? * Uninhabited systems do not require their own article. This was my fault for not clarifying, so I added a specific note to the proposal to point this out. Some groups of systems (Wraith space perhaps) might warrant their own coverage, but this all depends of whether enough information is out there to add. * While the goal would generally be only a single article per system to keep things clean and compact, I don't see why a special case can't be made for certain spobs like Earth to maintain a separate page just for them. The system article can list the more brief normal description and have a link to a main article as it is required. I don't particularly know of any I consider that just absolutely have to have their own page, but I'm not opposed to including them if people feel they really are valuable to have. On some of your other points: * Noting neighboring systems is hardly extraneous. In fact it is a very natural and nice thing to have on a page for those who might be interested in browsing through the systems. Obviously not everyone will use the information, but many will. I can tell you it is quite frustrating for example to be on the Earth article and have no easy link from there to Sol. * Having a game-guide feel to certain parts of this wiki is pretty well unavoidable. I have to admit, that articles on ships and outfits, not to mention any article referring to story-lines, can have that 'feel'. I think this really is a natural result of adding information since the vast majority of EV Nova information is from the game and its documentation, afterall. Remember, aftarall, this is a game wiki, not Wikipedia. As much as I respect bringing over concepts from the big guy, as has been noted by others, they don't always port to what we are doing here. Afterall, if were to stick to merely true encyclopedic content, then we'd be just as well to just copy everything over to Wiki itself. Having a separate wiki for EVN offers the opportunity to greatly expand on what can be offered, and thus the Wiki can serve a useful purpose. I presented this as a proposal not for the purpose of holding a referendum but instead to make it clear that I desired input from other users and that the concept was still a work in progress. Adding new content does not require consensus, and no one should be getting peeved at anyone else for adding such content. As far as existing articles, you can see that merge notes have been added to many of them with references to this proposal so that people might offer their suggestions. I agree that the merges are something it is appropriate to await a consensus on and trust me I have no desire to bully anything through in that regard. The Sol and Tichel systems both have existing content and really do require some time for people to weigh in before they are overhauled into any kind of new format. I have returned a note to the community page for two reasons: # To make it easier for people to notice that this proposal is a current item. People aren't as inclined to visit the talk page if they don't have anything that indicates there is something there to talk about. # It is not exactly as if the community page is cluttered with a lot of items. I think that the community portal absolutely should have links to active projects, and if this one becomes inactive, of course it can be removed at that time. Please continue to highlight ideas and comments regarding this project as I have already incorporated many such ideas and will continue to eagerly incorporate input from all users as it comes. Thanks!!! Joshbaumgartner 20:45, 11 August 2007 (UTC) :Referencing to both comments in this section and the one below, your arguement contradicts itself, unfortunately. You state that the gazetteer is set-up to lump all the spobs within a system into a system article. But you use the argument about even small towns having seperate articles, the equivalent to your posposal would be sticking all the cities into an article about the county or equivalent they are in. Logically, we can't do both. We'd either have to have seperate articles for the systems with planets lumped in, or seperate articles for the planets with system specific information in the List article (with the notable exceptions of Kontik and K-003, those having quite a bit of information and mystery about them). Personally, if we don't use the list thread as the primary means for minor worlds, I'd rather have seperate articles for the inhabited ones and use a info box much like weapons, ships, and outfits use to display their services and use "See also" links for other spobs in the system, since it would be much cleaner overall. I'll create an infobox if need be (assuming I can figure out how). :And while your argument about the cities is (currently) valid, Wikipedia has been doing a bunch of merging and condensing lately. I.E., most of the Starfox characters used to have seperate articles, but not have been lumped into a list-type article. Same goes for many planets in the Starfox universe (and in other universes too, for that matter). That's where I got the idea for using the list system for the spobs. Hence where my list idea comes from. :And listing system links is rather unneccesary. After all, we have this. At glance information available without doing the article search dance. All we need to do is find the best place(s) to link to it/display it and that entire issue is solved. This picture speaks a few thousand words you still haven't written. :) :As for working on the project, while no consensus is needed to add information and only affect one or two articles with it, my concern with the project is that it has potential to effect a few hundred articles. Hence why I believe it needs some backing before it goes ahead. I'm also thinking of creating a page or two specifically for projects and project proposals and linking it to the community portal. JoshTigerheart 04:45, 12 August 2007 (UTC) ::If you would like to make the argument that we should have a separate article for every spob, that's possible, I just don't feel we need to go that far. However, the argument that giving more minor spobs their own article is un-encyclopedic doesn't hold water. If you feel Kontik and K-003 deserve their own articles, I welcome you to expand on that and make it so. I certainly wouldn't stand in your way. And if you feel strongly about creating individual articles for every uninhabited system, I also would not oppose that effort. I just am more focussed on the inhabited systems at the moment, as a series of stubs on uninhabited systems is bound to be fodder for deletionists to gnash their teeth over. Also as stated in my project details, the general design is to have articles for the system and contain the spobs within it, but of course in cases where a particular spob has a good deal of information, of course it can have its own article. That won't hurt anything. If eventually there is enough information to warrant articles for every spob in the universe, so be it. ::As for system links, I take it your proposal is that linked systems not be mentioned on the system's page? But instead, say on Tau Ceti, there would be no mention of its link to Sol, but a user would have to go to the page you noted (which the user would have to know about in the first place), then click on the high-res link so they can actually read the thing, then figure out where the system is, see the links, then because it is not a link-map, manually type in the system name in the search box to go to that article? And this is superior to having a link to Sol in the Tau Ceti article? ::Are you sure it isn't a bit of hyperbole to claim this project affects hundreds of articles? This wiki only has (at the moment) 386 articles. How this project would force changes on the numerous ship and weapon articles is beyond me. Also, how it would affect such valuable articles as soon is also beyond me. In fact, perusing the Special:All articles list, I found it hard to find articles that would be affected. Now, does this project have the potential to encompass a few hundred articles itself upon completion? Yes, but most of them don't exist. ::As for creating a projects page, I think that is a wonderful idea, as I think about three or four good projects come to mind that would help tackle some of the different areas of the wiki. Joshbaumgartner 18:47, 12 August 2007 (UTC) :::You misunderstood me on the system issue. I'm against the uninhabited systems have their own articles, period. Right now, I'm most in favor of planets and systems being condensed into one (or more if neccessary if it gets too big, maybe List of Federation systems and spobs, List of Uninhabited, etc.) with all the spobs with a fair amount of information available on them, like Earth (which is missing a TON, that History section is barely a stub), getting their own articles. My next most favored method would be having articles on all inhabited spobs, with systems and uninhabited spobs being regulated to lists only. The third method in my preference list is how this project approaches it. The last method would be having no pages at all, which I'm against but really have never had the time to rectify. :::And K-003 and Kontik are some of the exceptions that would deserve articles. Ever read the threads titled speculation? Thanks to ambigious confirmations from several cryptic ATMOSians, we know that that system and planet are far more than they appear! :::And hundreds of pages is highly accurate. No matter how we go about this, there's going to be a few hundred potential pages affected, and some twenty odd already. Looking at Nova Data 2, it states there are 411 spobs and 545 systems. Now you see why I'd rather have lists? Adding articles for every inhabited spob or doing the gazateer would add several hundred articles to the Wiki. By contrast, there are only 288 ships, including all the variants (probably roughy 50-60 ships in reality), 81 weapons, 242 outfits (including the weapons, launchers and ammo; more like 120 outfits). In other words, that'd make one of the not-as-important aspects of Nova comprise half this Wiki. I don't see that as a good thing. JoshTigerheart 22:22, 12 August 2007 (UTC) ::::It looks like it's been a year and a half since any progress was made on this, but, for the record, of the three recommendations JoshTigerheart proposes, I support the 2nd the most. I believe -every- inhabited spob deserves an article. The game tells us more about any given spob than it does about anything else, really. I'm very much against the idea of putting inhabited spobs into lists; not only is it counterintuitive to have some spobs in lists and others with their own articles, but I believe there's more than enough information to have articles for each of them. I'm not very concerned about what happens to systems; they aren't as important, and the game tells us next to nothing about them. I think a list would be just fine for those, although I do think including what systems a given system links to would actually be relevant, easy to include, and of some use. Yes, the map makes navigation easy, but sometimes you just want to be able to move from one article to a related one with ease (or, in this case, one section in a huge list to another in the same list). My two cents. -- Hinotori 12:20, 6 April 2009 (UTC) Is a gazetteer encyclopedic? It appears that there is some question whether a gazetteer is encyclopedic in nature. Leaving aside the question of whether this wiki should be strictly limited to encyclopedic content, I have drawn on my experience with Wikipedia and I am convinced that a gazetteer is indeed appropriate for a wiki encyclopedia, even if that is what this wiki is limited to. Wikipedia has entries for every single country of the world regardless of their relative importance. Moreover, even the smallest town is granted an entry (though not all have been created yet). There is no grouping such as 'List of minor towns of Texas' to group smaller entries as a replacement for individual treatment. Levelland or Taylor are granted the same acceptance as Houston or Dallas, even though quite naturally far more material is submitted for New York City than for Yakima. However, there is no movement to delete 'Nehalem, Oregon' just because for the vast majority of us it is something we will never care about, much less need to know anything about. Having articles on lesser topics doesn't hurt anything, but not being comprehensive in your treatment of something does. Thus I remain firmly convinced that it is indeed proper for an encyclopedia to be inclusive of minor as well as major topics, and that a comprehensive gazetteer of a universe which this wiki is supposed to be all about is indeed an appropriate thing to include on this wiki. Joshbaumgartner 22:38, 11 August 2007 (UTC) List of links vs. posted galaxy map I considered your argument for the links being listed in the articles. It clearly shows the faults of using the map, as shown... ::As for system links, I take it your proposal is that linked systems not be mentioned on the system's page? But instead, say on Tau Ceti, there would be no mention of its link to Sol, but a user would have to go to the page you noted (which the user would have to know about in the first place), then click on the high-res link so they can actually read the thing, then figure out where the system is, see the links, then because it is not a link-map, manually type in the system name in the search box to go to that article? And this is superior to having a link to Sol in the Tau Ceti article? However, this scenario came to mind when I found myself searching for systems. Let's say the player recieves a mission to go to a system they have either not yet visited or don't remember where it is. Their first instinct will be to open the in-game galaxy map and look for the flags it shows. However, if none are present, such as in the case of the "Find Mu'Haro" missions, their next instinct will be to look for the system on the map, possible using the in-game system search feature. If there is no go there and they're not interested in manually searching in-game first, let's say they come here to find it. Let's say it's using your system of listing links. They find the page and look at the links. However, it only lists adjacent links. So, in order to figure out where to go, they have to keep clicking links and hope they get lucky...if they ever do. Then they have to use the back button and record the systems they found in-between (or in a way out-of-the-way path) before attempting to go to the system in question. Not very useful, it'd be faster to just ask on the ASW Boards where it is. Now we use the map. Whereever they are taken to, the map is either present, the List article is linked (where I'm going to post the map after this), or there could be a link to a generic article about the galaxy map itself, in-game features, Qaanol's relevant plug, etc. They click it, go to high res, and look for the system. Odds are they're going to know the general region of space (compass direction, government, etc.) it is located in, since the missions usually give clues and the map clearly shows governments and such. They look in that region and then they find the system in question. They can then easily have a very good idea of where it is, or quickly write down a jump-route by following the lines on the map without playing the guessing game. If they keep having problems finding systems, they can simply download the map. Not to mention the map can be used to easily find wormholes, see the entire hypergate network at glance, see who owns which regions, and see if anything is out in the galactic north, north-east, and north-west. I don't forsee people needing to get on the internet to find what links to the system adjacent to them, thanks to the in-game galaxy map and the map outfit/topographic sense, something that nullifies most of the use that either method would get. I know it may seem like I'm a bit down on all of your suggestions and work. However, it's nothing personal (though I'm sure you realize that), and I am glad that someone is actively working on the spobs for the Wiki, regardless of whether I am in favor of the method they are employing or not. No matter how we go about it (ignoring the problem aside), it's going to be a ton of work, so I am appreciative that you're at least doing something about it (I don't have enough time to do anything serious between all my other demands on my free time, such as Colosseum). JoshTigerheart 01:18, 13 August 2007 (UTC)